Dennis Wickham, new managing director at manroland Australia has begun his tenure, taking over from Steve Dunwell, who just retired after seven years leading the business.
At the same time Andreas Schwoepfinger replaces Graham Wickham as technical director service, responsible for all services and products from manroland web and sheetfed businesses.
The company dominates the market for web presses in Australia, with PMP, IVE, Fairfax and News all running manroland presses. It is also a major player in sheetfed presses and in packaging, where Hannapak and Graphic Packaging International are numbered among its customers.
Australia is one of manroland’s most successful markets, particularly in web presses, where the global market is a fraction of what it was before the GFC, sales overall in 2016 were just $160m compared with around $2bn in 2007.
Wickham says, "We are also looking forward to conquering new market areas for digital finishing and offset solutions. I am happy to work with the team within manroland to make manroland web systems Australasia even more successful in the future.”
[Related: Dunwell bids goodbye to industry]
Schwoepfinger says, "Besides new sales we are mainly considering possibilities for growth in the service sector. With many of the biggest Australian printers as our customers, we want to increase the support for our customers for press upgrades and services but also new features, like the manroland web store, our 24/7 online store for wear- and spare parts."
Alexander Wassermann, managing director, manroland web system says, "Both Dennis Wickham and Andreas Schwoepfinger, have been working for manroland web systems for a long time and understand the needs of each customer through the development of strong relationships. They are well aware of the Australian market requirements and bring a lot of enthusiasm to support the Australasia customers to be successful. With the new team, manroland Australasia will keep its strong market position and strengthen it – especially in the service sector.”
The company says the Australasia region covering Australia and New Zealand is a huge and successful market for manroland web systems, the market leader in web offset presses.
Steve Dunwell and Graham Wickham, have been managing directors of manroland web systems Australasia since 2008 and 2009.
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